Why We All Need to Worry About Revenge Porn

Over Labor Day weekend, celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton faced the nightmare of knowing the Internet was ogling their private, naked photos. Unknown hackers targeted a long list of famous women—from singers to actresses to athletes—and stolen photos of their intimate moments have continued to roll out on community sites like 4chan and Reddit. As the story evolves, the ominous phrase "revenge porn" has quickly become a buzzword. But who is seeking out revenge on these women? Are these photos really porn? And most importantly, what are we doing about it?

Revenge porn is not what it sounds like.

Despite a few high profile incidents, the concept of revenge porn is still rather hazy. No thanks to whoever coined the phrase because it's misleading. A more accurate term for revenge porn would be non-consensual pornography, which means the distribution of sexually graphic photos or videos without the subject's consent. The classic example is a malicious ex-boyfriend who publishes your intimate photos after the relationship is over—definitely vengeance driven. But as we have seen with the celebrity hacking, perpetrators of non-consensual pornography aren't always out for revenge and may not even know the victims personally. Sometimes perps are looking for fame, money, blackmail, or just sick entertainment.

Don't be steered wrong by the "porn" part of revenge porn either. Many victims of revenge porn are made to feel slutty or ashamed of themselves for taking sexy photos. Often, they're fired from their jobs, kicked out of school, threatened with sexual violence, harassed, or stalked. Let's be clear, snapping a photo in the buff does not make you a porn star.

The horror of discovering that naked photos of you are plastered all over the Internet isn't a misfortune that is confined to celebrities, or people with psychotic exes standing outside their houses singing "Every Breath You Take." A 2014 PEW study found that 27 percent of smartphone owners said they have received a sext; 12 percent said they have sent one. The younger age brackets were the most prolific sexters: 44 percent of 18-24 year olds said they've received a sext; 22 percent of 25-34 year olds said they've sent one. (So, no, your friends aren't the only ones sending the late night Snapchats.) Considering 67 percent of Internet users in a committed relationship have shared passwords with their partner or spouse, quite a few Americans are potentially at risk for having their private photos posted online.

Mary Anne Franks, vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, told me that the public needs to get the message that revenge porn is not a minor inconvenience, it's a form of sex abuse. According to our conversation, 23 percent of people (mostly women) who have visited the CCRI website have been victims of revenge porn. More often than not, the unauthorized photos were accompanied by the victim's full name and sometimes her social media links, e-mail address, home address, and phone number.

Before you pitch your electronics and go into full Howard Hughes mode, know that you're not completely without protection. There are criminal laws against non-consensual pornography in 15 states: New Jersey, Alaska, Texas, California, Idaho, Utah, Wisconsin, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, Maryland, Colorado, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii. These laws are far from perfect, but they do provide victims with the ability to go to the police for help instead of having to hire a lawyer.

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As many people are quick to point out, the criminalization of revenge porn and online sexual harassment needs to be balanced with free speech protections. Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and the author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, has spent years studying online privacy and thinks there is a way to accommodate civil rights and civil liberties. "Free speech is not an absolute," Citron says. "The first amendment is more nuanced than that. We protect free speech because we want to allow people to have freedom of expression and engage in self-governance, but rape threats and nude images are silencing victims and driving them offline. This speech is interfering with a victim's fundamental life opportunities."

Franks points to child pornography as a good example of how criminalization deters potential perpetrators. "Everybody was shamelessly passing these celebrity photos around until [gymnast] McKayla Maroney announced that she was underage in her pictures," she says. "Suddenly that's child porn. You can go to jail just for looking at child porn, let alone distributing it, so people quit posting her images. If we had a federal criminal law in place that said every time you disclose these images it's a crime, then I think a lot fewer people would have been disclosing them." To that end, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative is working with California Congresswoman Jackie Speier on federal legislation against revenge porn.

The first thing to do is check out websites like End Revenge Porn and Without My Consent for resources on state laws, legal advice, counseling, and ways to get in touch with other victims. If you took the photos yourself, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, you can send a take-down notice to any website running your photos without your permission. Franks suggests filing a police report regardless of whether your state has a criminal law because you may be protected under stalking, harassment, or voyeurism laws.

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Preventing revenge porn on a grand scale.

Danielle Citron says that Americans need to take a broad scope in how we tackle the problem of revenge porn and cyber-sexual harassment. "Education about privacy, sexual harassment, and consent has got to be pitched at kids in lower schools, parents, and Internet intermediaries with lots of wide and different audiences," she says. "I am gratified by the groundswell of attention to these issues and I hope it remains." Even though we have seen grave instances of sexual violence this year—from Elliot Rodger to the growing epidemic of campus assaults—we have also seen a wave of support from women and men to stand up against this violence.

On Friday, President Obama launched the "It's On Us" campaign with a video featuring awesome role models like Kerry Washington, Connie Britton, Jon Hamm, Joel McHale, Rose Byrne, and Questlove. The initiative is directed at ending sexual assault on college campuses, but the message applies to all forms of sexual violence. "Prevention is going to require a fundamental shift in our culture," the President said in his address. "As far as we've come, the fact is that from sports leagues, to pop culture, to politics, our society still does not sufficiently value women. We still don't condemn sexual assault as loudly as we should…It's on all of us to reject the quiet tolerance of sexual assault and to refuse to accept what's unacceptable."

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